1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cleaning device which cleans an image forming apparatus or an intermediate transfer member, and an image forming apparatus including the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Some of cleaning devices used for image forming apparatuses, such as printers, copying machines, and facsimile machines, include a cleaning blade (cleaning member) which cleans an image bearing member or an intermediate transfer member.
For example, in an image forming apparatus using an electrophotographic system, a toner image is primarily transferred from a photosensitive drum (image bearing member) to an intermediate transfer belt (intermediate transfer member), and is secondarily transferred from the intermediate transfer belt to a sheet. At the time of the transfer, a small amount of toner remains in the photosensitive drum or the intermediate transfer belt. The toner remained in the photosensitive drum or the intermediate transfer belt (hereinafter, referred to as residual toner) is removed by the above-described cleaning blade.
In the cleaning device using the cleaning blade, it is necessary to pressurize the cleaning blade against the photosensitive drum. However, in a case where the pressure of the cleaning blade is changed, there arises a problem in that the cleaning blade is bent back or the residual toner is taken out by a poor cleaning.
Therefore, there is proposed a configuration in which a compression coil spring is provided on a back side of a cleaning blade, and a pressure of the cleaning blade is constantly applied to a photosensitive drum by using a pressure of the compression coil spring (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-228775 (Patent Literature 1)).
As described in Patent Literature 1, when the cleaning blade is pressurized by the compression coil spring, the compression coil spring needs to be positioned by some unit. As the positioning unit, a configuration which press-fits a compression coil spring into a commonly used positioning boss may be considered. In this case, in a portion where the compression coil spring and the positioning boss are engaged with each other by press-fit, the compression coil spring generates no pressure. Hence, a desired pressure cannot be obtained. Also, in a case where the positioning member is provided on not a cleaning blade side but a container side, a position being spring-pressurized is changed by the posture of the blade. Therefore, it is difficult to stably apply a pressure.